Community Quilts

EBHQ members have a long history of sharing quilting expertise, time, and love with others. Individual members often make beautiful raffle quilts for fund raising efforts in local schools and organizations. On average, Childrens Quilts/EBHQ volunteers donate 1200 quilts a year to local children and youth organizations. Guild members have stitched quilts to comfort several communities affected by California fires including members of our own guild who lost their homes in the Oakland Hills Fire. Our healing quilts have anonymously comforted local young people affected by unspeakable violence.

The Latest Community Quilt News

On our September 9 Drop-In the final stitches were sewn on the labels of 18 family sized quilts for survivors of the Napa August 24 earthquake. The Napa guild has a section of volunteers who produce community outreach quilts. The leader of this group will identify 18 people in the area who will comforted by receiving one of EBHQ’s big emergency quilts. After coming down and picking up our quilts, she will then deliver them.  How very wonderful that these are all ready to be snuggled around such families in need.  Take a look at these beautiful quilts. (iPad/iPhone users click here.)

napa quilts


EBHQ Members:  A New Way to Contribute Your Talents

A new delivery system is now in place to get 10-12 of our quilts a month delivered to the Kaiser NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.) The size needed is 38 by 46 inches. This specific size will be used as an incubator cover and will dull the machine noises and lights in the nursery as well as cheer the parents and hospital staff with the happy colors and patterns. The quilt will go home with its own infant at the end of the hospital stay.  If the infant does not survive, the parents decide if the quilt stays with their babe or comes home to comfort the family. So much love is stitched into each one of our quilts. It is amazing how many hearts they touch.

If you would like to help with some aspect of the delivery system for the 1000+ quilts that EBHQ distributes each year, please e-mail  EBHQchildrensquilts@gmail.com.


Additionally, our quilts have been sent with love and healing wishes to survivors of Hurricane Katrina; women in recovery from surgical fistula repair at the Heal Africa Hospital in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo; newborns in Bacho, Tanzania; earthquake victims in Joplin, Missouri; and survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.


You are most welcome to join us in our current quilt projects:


  • Quilts of Valor  This foundation collects and distributes quilts called Quilts of Valor (QOV's) to service members and veterans. This foundation is not about politics. It's about people. EBHQ members donate quilts and fabric to this non-profit through our Children's Quilts distribution system.


   

quilt and photo by Deanna Davis



This note of appreciation from the Onesie Twosie organization of Kensington, CA illustrates how much these donated quilts can mean to the recipients.

And here's another letter from Onesie Twosie:

I want to thank you and all of the members of The East Bay Heritage Quilters for the beautiful, handmade quilts that you have given to Onesie Twosie this year.  I am estimating that  you provided 240 quilts.  That is a lot of caring and generosity.  The social workers that have received and distributed these blankets are so grateful to be able to give something beautiful and useful to the families that have so little.  When I have met some of these new moms, I am always impressed at how much they love their babies and how they want to give them whatever they can to help them have a good life.  Thank you for helping these smallest neighbors of ours.
 
Best wishes for a healthy, peaceful, and happy 2014.
 
Laurie Marson
Onesie Twosie   http://www.onesietwosie.org/ (for more information)

Children's Quilts News...Aug. 18, 2014

Sadly, we've just received word from Laurie Marson, director of Onesie Twosie that their organization will no longer be delivering quilts, afghans and booties.  Laurie shares with us that these items that the East Bay Heritage Quilters have supplied have been wonderful and very much appreciated by the recipients. She also asks that sincere thanks be conveyed to all of our members for your support and help.


Sasha Fleishman enjoying the beautiful quilt sent for comfort and love by East Bay Heritage Quilters after being burned on a bus ride home from school in Berkeley. Debbie Crandall, mother, writes to say, "I hope you can share this with whomever made it. Sasha LOVES it and so do we! Sasha is home now and feels all warm and snuggly under it. Thank you all so much."


News about recent EBHQ quilt projects:

Here's a heart-warming letter from a quilt recipient in Colorado.

I just received a quilt from a friend in Lyons, who told me that the community was sent quilts from your group after our flood. I hope this thank you is going to the appropriate place. The quilt is beautiful blue colors. I LOVE it and am sure it was made and given with much care and concern. My friend picked it out for me some time ago, but since I am still displaced from Lyons it took a while for us to meet , so she could give it to me. I live in the hardest hit area of my beloved little town. It will be a long while before I will be able to live in my home. It’s so hard to be separated from my special community. It’s been overwhelming how much help we have gotten, in so many ways, to help us thru this unimaginable challenging time. Bless all of you! Your kindness and thoughtfulness will not be forgotten. It’s unbelievable how much love there is in the world. I use the lovely quilt every night.

With tears of appreciation

Pam Barnes
Lyons Colorado

  • Heal Africa Hospital, Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo   Do you sometimes get  discouraged and think that one person cannot make a difference. This touching article tells the story of the founder of the hospital where we sent our quilts to help heal women in Africa. Because of the current turmoil in Goma more quilts cannot be safely distributed at this time. Financial support of this hospital is always welcomed and hopefully, again sharing our quilts may be possible in the future.
Thank You From Africa
Nurses and midwives in Bacho, Tanzania sing thanks for our EBHQ baby quilts:   "We mothers of KAMM* (an acronym meaning "improving health for women and children) we say a lot of thank you to you. Thank you for doing the nice things to us. Thank you for making the small blankets for our new babies. We say Karibu Dareda/Bacho (Welcome to Dareda/Bacho.) Please thank all the ladies of your quilting guild for bringing such joy to the lives of the villagers in Tanzania."